"The Marionette's Banquet"

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"The Marionette's Banquet" (マリオネットの饗宴, Marionetto no Kyōen) is the thirteenth episode of the Sakura Quest anime series, aired on June 28, 2017. The episode was written by Shingo Irie, storyboarded by Nanami Sanjou, and directed by Shinichi Masaki.

The Chupakabura Kingdom Founding Festival has taken off in Manoyama, and Yoshino, Shiori, Maki, Sanae and Ririko started working to make their latest project go smoothly. With the thousands of people and the tourism boost of Manoyama on the line, will the town greatly benefit from this event?

After understanding the scale of the upcoming Founding Festival, Yoshino, Maki and Sanae learned about the lodging problem in Manoyama from the campers that now occupy much of Sakura Pond. The next morning, however, Kume and Amamiya assured them that the flow of people to the venue have been taken care of, leaving Yoshino and the others to welcome the members of Ptolemaios. Meanwhile, the merchants of Manoyama, who earlier doubted Yoshino's plans for the event, started setting up their shops for the Founding Festival. As Ririko began helping at her grandmother's stall, Maki started overseeing the volunteers for the event. Elsewhere, Yoshino psyched herself for her role in the trivia contest and was accompanied by Ushimatsu to the venue.

Although nervous at first, Yoshino started her welcoming speech with a more positive mood after seeing the people that are present at the venue. Afterwards, the festival continued as planned, with merchant booths and smaller attractions scattered across town. However, the Ptolemaios concert began to be held back due to problems in equipment, and it presented a risk of having the concert and the trivia contest happening at the same time. As feared, the concert started at about the same time as the first question was asked in the trivia contest, causing the audience to move to the concert grounds. The trivia contest continued despite the roaring crowd at the Ptolemaios concert, and Mr. Sandal ended up winning the prize of a trip of two to Guam.

The Founding Festival was considered as success, allowing the town to meet its yearly tourist figure of 6,000 in one day and organizing the festival without any problems. But, Yoshino woke up the next day to see piles of 500-yen coupons among the trash and Manoyama back to its desolate state. Although saddened by the event's lack of impact to tourism, she and the ministers hoped that the Moving Mountains feature of their efforts in the town would bring a positive effect to the town. However, the heavily edited footage used in the feature has built the wrong impressions of their efforts in the Founding Festival, and the actual festival was misrepresented. Among the most affected of this was Yoshino, who started wondering if her six months in Manoyama had been worthwhile.

The next day, a gloomy Yoshino packed her bags and left for Manoyama Station.